Festive Fiery Ginger Beer & Turbo Cider (my first attempts)

[The Goatreich]

last night I attempted my first turbo cider, and also something I've been quite excited about doing the fiery ginger beer. In order to make the ginger beer slightly festive I added some ingredients to the recipe that's posted elsewhere on this board, and slightly changed the quantities as I was only making a gallon to start with.

Turbo Cider
4.5L Tesco Value Apple Juice (will top up with the remaining juice when it's settled)
1tsp pectolase
1tsp youngs wine yeast compound (it's all I had)
1tsp yeast nutrient
1 mug of strong black tea.

Going to leave this a couple of weeks to ferment as I'm in no rush, plus I'm away for most of next weekend.

Festive Fiery Ginger Beer
300g freshly grated ginger root
1tsp ground ginger
1 lemon
1 lime
0.5tsp cream of tartare
1 tsp ground cinammon
2 cloves

All the above added to a pan with some boiling water and simmered for 30 minutes while it filled the house with a lovely christmassy smell.
After 30 minutes removed from the pan and added stirred in 550g of sugar, it was supposed to be 500g, but I slipped....oh well :

Left the mixture to cool, then added to the FV and topped up to the shoulder with cold water, added youngs wine yeast compound, yeast nutrient, given a little shake and left under airlock. Hopefully this will be ready for a quick racking off and back-sweetening next weekend.

One thing I should've done with this was chop the ingredients a little finer, or find a better way of transferring the mixture to the FV as the bits all kept blocking the funnel and was a bit of a nightmare.

Also, I probably could've added some more cinammon and cloves but I didn't want to overdo it just in case.


Hopefully these will both turn out great....we'll see.

 

[danny dorito]

I've just racked my first turbo cider and leaving it to clear. I used exactly same ingredients except I didnt use any tea. It started off realy slow (i thought the yeast was a dud) and then it went mental after a day or two. Took 6 days to ferment down to an f.g of 1.000. I'm clearing it now but it doesn't seem to want to clear very quick compared to a wine.

 

[The Goatreich]

I didn't take any original gravity readings, which was a bit of a faux pas, but I always get confused when using demijohns and topping up after a few days as this will obviously affect the reading.

 

[danny dorito]

if i remember correctly it had an o.g of 1.045 so if fermented down to 1.000 it should be about 6%. i could do with a better hydrometer though. ive got a youngs jobbie and its quite hard to read.

 

[alphacento]

I didn't take any original gravity readings

Apple juice gravity is around O.G. 1050. Maybe a little bit less.

 

[The Goatreich]

Bottled these last weekend. The ginger beer tasted amazing, so with the extra week or so of secondary fermentation in the bottle it should be even better. I'm definitely going to do another one of these really quickly.

I'm leaving the cider in the bottle until the summer (if we get one).